A Farm, a Felony -Guyana’s Relativity Theory

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA JULY 2026

A Farm, a Felony -Guyana’s Relativity Theory

OPINION BY: GHK LALL 

Five years are an eternity.  Cold-blooded murder.  A trail quickly gone cold.  Cold trail or calculated coverup?  A family left with the chill of their tears.  There was the uneasy feeling that missing links ought not to be.  What linkages, missing or not, and why?  One thing was certain: the whole story, the true story, of the Fagundes (Paper Shorts) execution was not forthcoming.  Then another: it shouldn’t be that unsolvable.  And still another: operation of law, application of law, enforcement grittiness and energy, and blindfolded justice were shadows of themselves.  Now, I follow this trail of untimely death, the passage of time, and another untimely development: the discovery of a farm.

What does a farm have to do with a heinous felony?  One that spilled its blood all over Guyanese consciousness. 

Neither a body nor any telltale splatter of blood was found on the farm.  Both savaged the peace and curdled on the pavement of the aptly named Main Street.  Yet, when I think of this, the question is why is a farm and many felonies coming up close to one another?  In other words, no mention of a farm, no mention of any felony.  Strange country, this Guyana is.  For five years, silence reigned. 

But like Banquo’s ghost in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, so also the ghost of Mr. Paper Shorts wouldn’t remain still.  The timing is immaculate.  Follow me.  If pain is added to the Fagundes family, apologies.  But no eggs cracked, no scrambled eggs.  Perhaps, unscrambled fits better.

Murder occurred, stayed underground for five long, punishing years.  Murder took less than five short days to be exhumed.  Maybe, with wheels spinning furiously, it was five hours, if not five minutes.  For a murder to be retrieved from the deepfreeze and paraded before the Guyanese public.  When developments are too pat, that’s when I rock back, reel in any slack, and work to crack the code.  From American football, I share sporting folklore: the best offense is an aggressive defense.  Attempting to takedown inspires greater efforts at returning the favor -twofold, threefold, manifold.  The development in the shadow of America’s Fourth of July ecstasies was of a placid farm, babbling brooks, clandestine nooks and crannies, and then Gotterdammerung.  A blitzkrieg: murder, Maimi Vice equivalents, more mystery.

In a jiffy, there’s a fluent, compelling story for citizens.  A suspect resurrected.  A circle of suspected involved cornered and corralled.  Before the farm, there was nobody.  Immediately after the farm discovery, there are more warm bodies than a submerged submarine surfacing.  This has all the precision timing of a well-made Swiss watch.  Swiss or Guyanese, that’s my thrust.  What I think, where I stand.  The clock ticks.  It also stinks.  Uncanny how after the first leaf and stone of that farm were arrayed in public display, that a murder was dug up and similarly displayed.  Where suspects only existed under the radar in earlier times, in these stormy times, those same suspects now participate in primetime presentations.

In all this, the PPP Govt’s well-refined art form is exhibited.  What works for it, but what also reveals.  When the PPP Govt has no defense, deflection becomes its flaming sword.  Deflection follows denial and precedes damnation.  Are all those not unfolding in tight formation?  In efforts at locating some elusive credibility.  What are the final objectives: to nail an opponent and be done with an inconvenience, an irrepressible, insoluble nuisance?  When the law takes forever to find its feet in Guyana, then lawlessness is a marathon runner.  For when there is in inversion of justice, what law?  When the timeline of a murder is seemingly tampered with, then whither honesty?  I behold the PPP Govt’s abandonment of all interests in, all claims to, all pretensions at, morality.  Cocooned in the pile of obscenity is a travesty.  Of justice.  Of conscience.  In toto, Guyanese are dealing with more than a crisis of circumstances combining.  They are living with a crisis in governance.  Why was this murder allowed to fester restlessly for five years?  And only now given oxygen?  

I wish I could hold a brief, stand in defense, for all parties in this deformity.  I cannot.  I hear and read.  I see, think, and speak.